There are two primary variations of mobile wireless networks: infrastructure mobile networks and infrastructureless mobile networks. The latter are also known as mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs). MANETs have no fixed infrastructure. Instead, mobile nodes function as relay points or routers, which discover and maintain communication connections between source nodes and destination nodes for various data transmission sessions. In other words, a MANET is a self-organizing, multi-hop wireless network in which potentially all nodes within a given geographical area participate in the routing and data forwarding process.
Maintaining communication links of an established communication path that extends between source and destination nodes is a significant challenge in MANETs. In particular, due to movement of the mobile nodes between the source and destination nodes, which typically cannot be controlled, such communication links are often broken. Although a new communication route can be established when a break in the communication path occurs, repeatedly reestablishing new routes incurs delay and substantial overhead.